Thursday, 13 June 2013

Cambodia: Land Titling Campaign Open to Abuse

Some of the youths deployed as land titling 'volunteers'
being feted by Cambodia’s ruling party: the CPP. The youths themselves may be
caught up in the party’s recruiting drive to swell its ranks with young, loyal
party followers and members, some of whom had been seen agitating against UN
Special Rapporteur Surya Subedi on his recent visit to Cambodia – School of
Vice

“It is good news that the land titling campaign has been
suspended until after the elections, but this demonstrates just how political
the effort has been from the outset. While some have benefitted from the
campaign, in other cases the scheme has amounted to a land grab by powerful
interests with no legal protections or recourse for those who lose out in the
process. The campaign is being conducted in a secretive and bullying manner in
which independent organizations are prevented from monitoring what is happening
and local residents are threatened if they complain.”

Brad Adams, Asia director

(New York) – A land measuring and titling campaign
launched and financed by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen lacks transparency
and accountability and could leave thousands dispossessed from their land. On
June 11, Hun Sen announced that the campaign would be suspended until after
national elections on July 28. Human Rights Watch called on Cambodia’s donors
to insist that the program be reformed into a professional and apolitical
process, or cancelled.

“It is good news that the land titling campaign has been
suspended until after the elections, but this demonstrates just how political
the effort has been from the outset,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human
Rights Watch. “While some have benefitted from the campaign, in other cases the
scheme has amounted to a land grab by powerful interests with no legal
protections or recourse for those who lose out in the process. The campaign is
being conducted in a secretive and bullying manner in which independent
organizations are prevented from monitoring what is happening and local
residents are threatened if they complain.”

Hun Sen has claimed that the measuring and titling
campaign was aimed to benefit people living without proper legal authorization
and documentation on state land designated for private use and granted to
companies as economic or forestry concessions.According to Hun Sen, his titling
program would provide ownership documents to 478,928 families in relation to
1.8 million hectares of land.

However, in practice the titling program is subject to
domination by wealthy and powerful interests who have diverted it to increase
their land-holdings and leverage over affected populations, Human Rights Watch
said. Moreover, the scheme has been set up by Hun Sen so that those victimized
by the program often have no effective recourse and may suffer adverse
consequences if they attempt to protest.

Campaign employs “Heroic Samdech Techo Volunteer Youth”

Human Rights Watch carried out research over a two-month
period into the efficacy of the land measuring campaign by the “Heroic Samdech
Techo Volunteer Youth,” which takes its name from an honorary title Hun Sen has
taken. The research focused on Koh Kong and Kampong Speu, two provinces with
some of Cambodia’s most severe land-grabbing by powerful political and economic
forces.

The campaign has been in operation since June 28, 2012.
In some places where measurement and titling have taken place, such as certain
parts of Sre Ambel district of Koh Kong province and Thporng district of
Kampong Speu province, residents report that the Samdech Techo Youth units who
worked in their villages were polite, solicitous of their views, and stood with
them and against powerful local interests to ensure they were eligible for
ownership titles of land that they had long occupied.

However, in other locations, the situation was very
different. For example, in Phnom Sruoch district of Kampong Speu province (the
name of the village is withheld to protect the villagers from retaliation),
villagers thrown off land that they or their parents and grandparents had
continuously farmed since the 1940s alleged that their attempts to prove this
to the Samdech Techo Youth unit operating in their area was rudely rebuffed
with threats by the unit leader. One villager told Human Rights Watch, “We spoke
with the student chief, who said if we made trouble, he would summon the
competent authorities to ‘throw you in irons and send you to prison.’ We said
we just wanted a solution, and he said we couldn’t have a solution for land
that was in dispute.”

Members of this community provided credible accounts,
backed by documents and reports of local Cambodian nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), that the land in question had been illegally taken from
them by Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) power-holders at the commune and village
level and by an officer of the Cambodian army’s national armor unit. Human
Rights Watch observed that the Samdech Techo Youth unit in question was
bivouacked on the grounds of the commune office.

In an indigenous minority community in Thporng district
of Kampong Speu, one distraught villager told Human Rights Watch that community
members were urged to accept Samdech Techo Youth measuring for individual
ownership titles. They agreed, only to realize after the fact that they had
thereby given up claims on other land that they considered community territory.
“The students said we had to accept what they were ordered to do by the
provincial cadastral officials who are acting on written orders from the
ministries in Phnom Penh,” the villager said. “If not, there could be trouble,
and we would get nothing.”

In Koh Kong province, members of a community in
Mondulseima district who had a longstanding claim to land originally allocated
to them by national Cambodian military authorities told Human Rights Watch that
although the Samdech Techo Youth unit had properly measured the land, the same
unit had also measured off adjacent plots of land which, to their knowledge, no
one previously had made a claim on. This community and many local residents believed
this was part of a process in which CPP-related political and financial
interests were taking advantage of the titling campaign to grab even more land
than the vast tracks already in their possession. “This land is being measured
so that it can be titled to the authorities, the rich, or their proxies,” said
a community leader. The Samdech Techo Youth unit implicated in these alleged
irregularities was being hosted by the Mondulseima district authorities and a
Koh Kong provincial military subregion unit.

Corruption risks in extralegal process

In another case, a farmer from Koh Kong district of Koh
Kong province told Human Rights Watch that he went to the local CPP authorities
to obtain the paperwork necessary in order to have his land measured by the Samdech
Techo Youth, but was refused because he was deemed to be a supporter of the
political opposition and because he refused to pay a bribe. He said he was
threatened with detention if he made trouble and that he had no recourse to
higher CPP authorities because they were related to those directly governing in
his area. “If you are a CPP person or pay money, then the local authorities
make sure your land gets measured quickly and properly,” he told Human Rights
Watch. “Otherwise, you will have problems.”

Human Rights Watch expressed concern over the risk of
corruption in a non-transparent and extralegal process. One dissident CPP Koh
Kong official spoke on the basis of anonymity to Human Rights Watch about what
he called “measuring for money.” He explained this meant that those with money
were going to the land office and other authorities guiding the Samdech Techo
Youth and paying to ensure measurement of land to which they were scheming to
obtain titles. He asserted that he had tried to criticize this corruption
within the CPP, but had been ignored.

“It’s not only opposition people who got ignored or
pressured to change sides, but the really poor whom the authorities are
pressuring to give them money,” the dissident CPP member said. “Those that do
can then get money or gifts back from the students in ceremonies that get shown
on TV, and now the local authorities have set this up into a system.”

Cambodia’s economy has relied on the granting of enormous
economic land concessions to foreign and domestic companies. Many of the
companies and individuals are high-ranking CPP officials, members of the
country’s armed forces and police, and financiers of the party’s current
campaign for national parliamentary elections. In many cases Cambodian
companies and individuals act in partnership with foreign entities, including
from China and Vietnam.

An estimated 700,000 Cambodians have been adversely
impacted by these and other such concessions, including numerous communities
originally residing in the concession areas or along their periphery who have
been forcibly evicted, sometimes violently, from land they had long legally
occupied and relied upon for a subsistence livelihood.

One of the most notorious cases involves the Boeng Kak
area of Phnom Penh. The capital’s authorities, supported by military and
police, have driven residents off Boeng Kak land to which they had a legitimate
ownership claim and without just compensation to clear the way for a business
venture by a Chinese firm and a Cambodian company owned by a close associate of
Hun Sen. In 2011 the World Bank, which had been supporting land titling in
Cambodia, suspended funding for new projects in Cambodia because of the
government’s failure to comply with the Bank’s safeguard policies in Boeng Kak
which, amongst other things, require proper consultation and compensation for
households that are resettled. The government excluded Boeng Kak residents from
the titling program and a resettlement policy framework which had been designed
to comply with the Bank’s safeguard policies.

One week after the Bank’s suspension of new lending
became public, the government issued a decree granting title to 800 families
over 12.44 hectares of residential land in the Boeng Kak area. But over 90
families were excluded from this decree and it does nothing for the 3,500 other
families who have accepted inadequate compensation under extreme pressure.
Despite recent government promises that it would finally provide Boeng Kak
residents with a just solution, it has instead reacted with security force
violence against protesters demanding that it fulfill this undertaking.

“For a large number of Cambodians, their only source of
subsistence is the land they live on and farm,” Adams said. “So how this
process is carried out can literally be a matter of life or death.”

Human Rights Watch called on donor countries, the World
Bank, and the United Nations to insist that the Samdech Techo land titling
process be thoroughly revised to ensure adequate public consultation, a
transparent process open to independent monitoring and evaluation, adequate
compensation for those who are denied title in favor of concession holders or
others, and an independent complaint process. Otherwise, it should not be
resumed after elections.The World Bank
should also not lift its suspension on new lending to Cambodia until all Boeng
Kak residents receive the land titles or compensation to which they are
entitled.

“Sadly, while the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights
has sounded the alarm, donors appear to be shrinking from demanding basic
transparency and accountability for a program that has such major impact,”
Adams said. “Instead of blithely accepting a fundamentally flawed process, or
even appearing to endorse it, donors should demand that it be scrapped or be
monitored and carried out in full accord with international standards and best
practices.”

Background on the Land Crisis and the Samdech Techo Youth
Campaign

While Hun Sen maintained in a speech on April 26, 2013,
that 1.5 million hectares have been granted as economic land concessions
(ELCs),one NGO assessment suggests this figure conceals an additional 1.1
million hectares of other de jure and de facto land grants to companies and
individuals as part of a process that has often been veiled with much secrecy.

Rising popular protest and resistance to such
land-grabbing led to arrests during 2012 of more than 200 land activists and
related human rights defenders. International donors threatened to withhold
increased funding for a longstanding national titling program unless it was
extended to fairly include areas of land conflicts. On May 7, 2012, Hun Sen
issued a four-point military-style “Order 01BB” (officially mistranslated as a
“directive”).

The order contained four points:

Temporarily
suspending the awarding of ELCs;

Calling for a
focus on the implementation of the “leopard skin” policy aimed at avoiding
adverse effects on social land and popular living standards;

Calling for
revocation of ELCs operated by companies that were failing to develop them or
grabbing land from the people or communities; and

Providing an
exemption from the ELC moratorium for concessions already granted in principle,
even if all the necessary legal processes to finalize them had not yet been
carried out.

This latter loophole allowed the granting of perhaps 15
hitherto unknown concessions claimed to fit the criteria, although a lack of
transparency makes it hard to know how many were granted.

The “leopard-skin” metaphor in the May 7 text was a
military one, referring to a counter-insurgency strategy according to which a
large number of small areas were to be seized from insurgent opponents and then
expanded until these adversaries were defeated. As in a military campaign,
everyone was taken by surprise.

On June 14, 2012, Hun Sen instructed that at least 10
percent of every land concession should be carved out to provide legal
possession to people in the area.

Hun Sen engaged in no community consultations before
issuing his order.

Background on the “Heroic Samdech Techo Volunteer Youth”

Hun Sen explained that the plan was to recruit youth
volunteers to demarcate land, working alongside government cadastral officials.
Using the quasi-royal title Hun Sen has adopted for himself, these youths have
been styled the “Heroic Samdech Techo Volunteer Youth.” They have been
recruited from pro-CPP circles at universities and among the pro-CPP “Pagoda
Boys,” an organization celebrating the origin of Hun Sen’s political career as
a youngster in a Buddhist monastery and with a history of vigilante-style
activities against opposition parties and independent civil society activism.

From the beginning, Hun Sen made it clear that the
program was intended to neutralize efforts by independent NGOs and the
political opposition to offer solutions to land disputes. He told rural people
to wait quietly for his program to benefit them. He specified that if they
acted in such a manner as to create a situation of dispute, they would not get
titles, so they should aim urgently to achieve local accommodations with
concessionaires and government authorities in order to allow measuring and
tilting to go forward.

Bypassing normal government channels, the Samdech Techo
Youth measuring campaign is not a government project, but rather an operation
which is financed by “Uncle” Hun Sen personally and the CPP, with supplementary
funding from private domestic and international firms associated with the
party. It is coordinated by his son, army Col. Hun Manit, who for this purpose
was named Deputy Secretary-General of the National Authority for Resolution of
Land Disputes, concurrently with his other positions as deputy chief of Hun
Sen’s cabinet, deputy chief of national Defense Ministry Intelligence, and a
CPP leader in charge of party “grassroots strengthening” for election purposes
in certain parts of Cambodia.

The Samdech Techo Youth conduct their work dressed in
military uniforms sometimes bearing government armed forces insignia and are
transported in government military vehicles. According to public government
reports, the Samdech Techo Youth are hosted almost everywhere they work and
provisioned by local CPP governing and military authorities and CPP business
interests.

Their work receives massive and constant laudatory
coverage in reporting by CPP-controlled broadcast, digital and print media,
which overwhelming dominate the public sphere in Cambodia. Their positively
spun stories appear intended to win votes for the CPP in the national elections
of July 28, 2013.

According to official statistics, by late April 2013 the
Samdech Techo Youth had measured one million hectares of land to the potential
benefit of 350,000 families.By early May 229,000 land ownership titles had
reportedly been distributed at ceremonies. On these occasions, cash and other
gifts were also handed out, while CPP officials urged recipients to vote for
the party in the national elections.

A Partisan initiative with no outside monitoring or
evaluation

Officials in the localities visited by Human Rights Watch
privately say the party and local businesses often direct or otherwise control
the targets and schedules of the Samdech Techo Youth.

At the same time, Hun Sen has insisted on the exclusion
of anyone other than his Samdech Techo Youth, authorized Cambodian officials,
and organizations deemed to have a genuine willingness to cooperate with his
policies from involvement in the land titling program. He further specified
that no measurement or titles would be provided in cases of land with regard to
which non-CPP political parties or what he characterized as opposition NGOs
made interventions. Those cases, he declared, would be frozen out from his
solution mechanism.

In practice, independent organizations and media have
been given no opportunity to monitor the process.

Cambodian NGO investigators in the provinces report to
Human Rights Watch that they continue to be systematically blocked from
monitoring the land titling campaign. Villagers in these areas have told Human
Rights Watch that they fear CPP retaliation if they are identified as talking
to “outsiders.”

Abuses in the Land Titling Campaign

Journalists have managed to publish a few critical
stories about the land titling campaign. For example, according to an early
April 2013 media report from Rolea P’ier district of Kampong Chhnang province,
Samdech Techo Youth, apparently acting under the direction of local government
authorities, measured land in favor of a powerful businessman – effectively
overturning a court ruling saying the measured plots belonged to villagers in
the district. Challenged about the matter, a Samdech Techo Youth leader said
the final decision about how to proceed would be up to a superior level of
authority. Another early April story reported that in Veal Veng district of
Posat province, local authorities overruled the results of Samdech Techo Youth
measurements, saying titles could not be issued because the land measured was
state land. An early May 2013 newspaper article about this same district
reported that the Youth had measured land for a major company with a huge
concession, families of police officers and other well-connected households,
but not for poor local residents.

In certain places, NGOs have also been able to pierce the
secrecy protecting the campaign. They have now clearly established that in the
particular situation of indigenous minorities in upland northeastern province
of Rattanakiri, the campaign has involved pressure by local authorities to
accept Samdech Techo Youth measuring for private titles instead of insisting on
obtaining communal titles designed to protect these communities’ economic and
cultural rights. The result has been that many minority villagers have lost out
on possibilities for obtaining larger holdings, the land lost instead becoming
available to be grabbed by agro-industrial firms.

However, instead of engaging in a serious dialogue about
these matters, the government has dismissed such fact-finding out of hand,
denouncing it as politically-motivated and intended to enflame public opinion
against it. Both NGO watchdogs and independent journalists continue to be
deterred or otherwise prevented from engaging in monitoring giving the titling
campaign the huge and comprehensive attention it is due.

Scrap or Reform the Land Titling Campaign

The land measuring and titling campaign needs to be
reformed in line with international best practices. If the government will not
do this, it should be discontinued.

The reforms should require:

Adequate public
consultation;

A transparent
process open to independent monitoring and evaluation;

Adequate
compensation for those who are denied title in favor of concession holders or
others; and

An independent
complaint process.

To implement “the right of everyone to have access to
safe, sufficient and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate
food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger,” the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in 2012 issued a set of “Voluntary
Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and
Forests in the Context of National Food Security”. The guidelines specify that
the relevant political authorities should engage and seek, “[T]he support of
those who, having legitimate tenure rights, could be affected by decisions,
prior to decisions being taken, and responding to their contributions; taking
into consideration existing power imbalances between different parties and
ensuring active, free, effective, meaningful and informed participation of
individuals and groups in associated decision-making processes.”The authorities
should act “to enhance the transparency” and thus improve the functioning of
such processes, including by promoting the involvement in them of
“organizations of farmers and small-scale producers, of fishers, and of forest
users; pastoralists; indigenous peoples and other communities; civil society,
private sector, academia; and all persons concerned with tenure governance as
well as to promote the cooperation between the actors mentioned.”

The guidelines add that, “In so doing, States should
respect and protect the civil and political rights of defenders of human
rights, including the human rights of peasants, indigenous peoples, fishers,
pastoralists and rural workers, and should observe their human rights
obligations when dealing with individuals and associations acting in defence of
land, fisheries and forests.” They should also encourage “mechanisms for
monitoring and analysis of tenure governance in order to develop evidence-based
programmes and secure on-going improvements” in land tenure programs. This is
necessary in order “to prevent corruption through transparent processes and
decision-making,” that beneficiaries are “selected through open processes” in
which there is no political or other discrimination, and in order to promote
social equality. The guidelines recommend that to achieve all this, the
authorities should “set up multi-stakeholder platforms and frameworks at local,
national and regional levels” to monitor and evaluate the implementation of
land tenure policies and programs,” including with technical support from
international bodies.

More generally, the guidelines declare that “States
should recognize that policies and laws on tenure rights operate in the broader
political, legal, social, cultural, religious, economic and environmental
context,” and that when major changes are made with regard to tenure rights,
they “should seek to develop national consensus.”

A UN Human Rights Council resolution, adopted on
September 27, 2012, similarly recognized “the importance of the freedoms of
peaceful assembly and of association, as well as the importance of civil
society, to good governance, including through transparency and accountability,
which is indispensable for building peaceful, prosperous and democratic
societies.” It stressed the contribution that civil society should be able to
make in this regard “to addressing and resolving challenges and issues that are
important to society.”

The UN’s independent Special Rapporteur on promotion and
protection of the right to freedom of expression and opinion has highlighted
the particular importance of these rights for the functioning of democratic
institutions, including via freedom to report on matters related to corruption,
environmental issues, public protests, and human rights violations.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

All too true. What exacerbates the land grabbing in Cambodia is overall weak land governance and a very corrupt Land Ministry led by Senior Minister Im Chunn Lim and a very loud rent seeking Head of Land Sar Sovann. This pair of land pirates have been fully backed by donors - Finland, Germany and Canada, who add fuel to the fire by backing the rorts. Donors and Technical Advisors (TA) are well rewarded and even awarded medals by the government - akin to accepting the 30 pieces of silver. Frequently in professional fora and journals we see the TA presenting fictitious accounts of achievements all based on headline grabbing rather than reality. In particular the Finn TA team leader is a notorious purveyor of this fiction as recently presented in "Coordinates" magazine writing on "Improving land administration systems in developing countries". http://mycoordinates.org/improving-land-administration-systems-in-developing-countries/

Donors like the incompetent Finn team consistently fail to provide a balanced, factual account of the land sector of Cambodia. Human rights abuses and violent land evictions are of no concern to these mercenary TA. Of course the land sector's weak governance has not improved in spite of NGO complaints to the World Bank and the subsequent screwed up World Bank Inspection case which was largely a cover and a failed attempt to lower the bar in order to re-engage with the government to keep its country program running.

Between Tea Banh and Hun Sen, who would you support? គាំទ្រ ហ៊ុន សែន ឬ ទា បាញ់?

Between Hun Sen and Sok An, who would you support? គាំទ្រ ហ៊ុន​ សែន ឬ សុខ អាន?

Welcome Message

Welcome! You have come to the right place. Khmerization is a home to the Cambodian daily news, which is updated twice daily. Please take a tour and enjoy yourself. Thank you.To contact Khmerization please send an email to: khmerization@gmail.com .

Install Khmer Unicode

Translate

Follow Khmerization by Email

Visitors Online

Sitemeter

Subscribe To Khmerization

Visitors by country since 4 July 2009

Khmerization Search

Custom Search

Search Result

Comment Moderation

Dear Readers,

Due to an increase in offensive and profane comments, Khmerization has decided to moderate all comments. Comments containing offensive language, profanities and racist connotations will not be published.